You can use SSH keys to establish a secure connection between your computer and Stash for when you are performing Git operations. In Stash, the option to clone using SSH only becomes available once you've added an SSH key to your user profile – this page describes how to do that.

  • If you already have a key you want to use, go to step 4 .
  • Your Stash administrator must have already enabled SSH access to Git repositories.
  • Supported key types are DSA and RSA2. RSA1 is not supported.

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1. Check for existing SSH keys

You should check for existing SSH keys on your local computer. If you already have a key pair that you want to use, you can go to step 4.

Open a command prompt, and run:

cd %userprofile%/.ssh

2. Back up old SSH keys

If you have existing SSH keys, but you don't want to use them when connecting to Stash, you should back those up.

In a command prompt on your local computer, run: 

mkdir key_backup
copy id_rsa* key_backup

3. Generate a new SSH key

Now you can generate a new SSH key.

  1. Log in to your local computer as an administrator.

  2. In a command prompt, run:

    ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com"

    Associating the key with your email address helps you to identify the key later on.

    Note that the ssh-keygen command is only available if you have already installed Git (with Git Bash).
    You'll see a response similar to this:

  3. Just press <Enter> to accept the default location and file name. If the .ssh directory doesn't exist, the system creates one for you.

  4. Enter, and re-enter, a passphrase when prompted. The whole interaction will look similar to this:

  5. You're done! 

4. Add an SSH key to Stash

  1.   In your command prompt, change directory to the .ssh directory, and copy the public key file to your clipboard by running:

    cd %userprofile%/.ssh
clip < id_rsa.pub

  2. In Stash, go to your profile:

  3. Click on SSH Keys and then Add Key:
  4. Paste the key into the text box:


  5. Click Add Key. You're done!